I am a graphic designer from Copenhagen, Denmark. I live and work in New York where I am a Senior Designer at Wolff Olins, making cool stuff. This means making inspiring identity designs and packaging in the world of branding.

You have recently moved from Copenhagen to New York to further your design career. Have you had to make any changes in the way you work or create?

Wolff Olins is definitely a very collaborative place, both in the studio and in the world, with whomever we might see as a good partner for specific projects. This has opened up a lot of doors and is really just an inspiring way to work.

Why did you decide to focus on design? What inspires your designs? Who inspires you?

It came very naturally to me; I’ve always been inspired by everything visual, colors, letters, compositions and product design. Everything inspires me, literally. My eyes are open everywhere I go, sometimes I have to force myself not to be on the lookout for inspiration. Take some hours off. Being a designer really is a full time job/hobby.

You have a great eye for typographyÂ… what would you recommend for designers who want to become better at this?

Thanks, experience I guess – I love typography, even though I am very picky about what typefaces I use. Be aware how much power is in typefaces. A typeface can literally change the mood and meaning of the text you are setting. That’s why I don’t want the typeface to get in the way of the idea.

Papyrus or Comic SansÂ… which is worse?

No comment.

Do you do a lot of sketching and designing on paper and then bring your designs into the computer, or do you prefer to work straight into the computer? What percentage of your work is done in Photoshop?

I do a lot of sketching, I try and carry notebooks with me all the time or I doodle something on my phone if I get an idea with no paper near me. Best ideas come from something that’s easy to draw, so it’s definitely not about being super great at drawing but just getting your ideas out.

Photoshop for me is great for making your ideas understandable for a client. Most work I do starts by hand, then maybe goes into Illustrator and/or InDesign, whether it’s an identity I am working on or a packaging design. When it comes to finish in photography and presentation I move to Photoshop – the final makeover bringing the work to life.

What is your favorite product that you have helped design and why? What product design do you wish you had been on the creative team that developed it? What is it about that design that captures you?

Wow, that’s a hard question, I think I am most proud of the more iconic things I have worked on, the Widex package that went viral as YouTube featured it was a fun project. And I love that 80,000+ people have watched a video with a package design for hearing aids in it. Also the Current TV identity and Copenhagen Parts, again very straightforward designs that people can (hopefully) relate to.

I definitely wouldn’t mind to have worked on the FedEx logo, a classic that still has great impact, even though the identity is just that logo used way too big (it just works!)

I love product design, I would love to be a Creative Director working with great product designers. (I currently do not design in 3D software) Out of everyday products I love my Tivoli Audio Songbook that wakes me up every morning – great minimal yet friendly design with a tactile twist – pure and fun at the same time. I also Love (capital L) all the PlusMinusZero products by Naoto Fukasawa.

What has changed in your style or technique when compared to where you were say five years ago? What has been the biggest influence in that change?

Definitely experiencing that sky is the limit moving to New York, working at Wolff Olins where colleagues as well as clients are great inspiration. It’s really motivating being surrounded by people that believe they can make a difference in the world.

You have done design work for companies like Belkin and Current TVÂ…what new design challenges would you like to take on in the next 5 years, and why?

As I said, I do love product design, so it would be great to integrate more of this into my work. I am also doing little side projects playing with the visual language. So instead of waiting for the perfect client that fits with a visual idea I have, I just might design something instantly just to put it out there. Like I did with the conceptual identity for Anonymous. It’s almost like a visual discussion, not about right or wrong.

To find out more about Mads and to see more of his work goto www.madsjakobpoulsen.com

Article By Paul Hebron

According to Wikipedia, the term “freelance” was first used by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe to describe a “medieval mercenary warrior” or “free-lance” (meaning that the lance isn’t sworn to any lord, not that it’s available free of charge). The term was recognized as a verb in 1903 by authorities in etymology, such as the Oxford English Dictionary. Only in modern times has “free-lance” morphed from a noun into an adjective, a verb, adverb, and into the noun “freelancer,” which is a writer or artist who sells services to different employers without a long-term contract with any of them.

Have you considered freelancing but weren’t sure if it’s for you? In this article, we’ll draw upon the comparison between a mercenary and a freelancer—the pixel warrior. We suggest six steps to consider in preparation for a warrior’s journey. I’ve also asked six successful creative professionals to share words of wisdom for anyone considering the path of a pixel warrior. Finally, I’ve prepared a personal checklist to help determine if you have the right stuff.

The inner call to freelance can be likened to the famed advertisement attributed to Ernest Shackleton (though it may be apocryphal): “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success.” Today, the call toward adventure still speaks to the hearts of men and women who choose to step out from under the warmth of a regular paycheck for a warrior’s journey. Freelancing is not for the faint of heart. These pixel warriors are digital mercenaries who must wear many different hats, some liked more than others. Even still, if the thought of working in your pajamas from home sounds better than sitting in a cubicle, then please lend me your ears for a few minutes—you just might be a fearless pixel warrior. But first, you must prepare for the adventure.

STEP ONE

The Mercenary: Join the military and get training.
Pixel Warrior: Go to college and get training. Let’s assume you have talent that needs refining and developing, then getting the needed training and experience will help you on your quest. This requires learning the most current industry software and hardware. Mastery of these tools is required before you can truly call yourself an expert. This is weapons training.

STEP TWO

The Mercenary: Try to get on a special operations team, such as the Navy SEALs, the Army Special Forces, and the Army Rangers.
Pixel Warrior: Start building your portfolio while in college. Try to learn from the best in your career area, those who are recognized for great work. If you can’t be taught directly, learn from observation. Study trade publications and take note of which campaigns or projects stand out in the marketplace. Remember, every class assignment is more than a grade—you’re laying the foundation to your future career.

STEP THREE

The Mercenary: Put in at least three years in the military and leave with an honorable discharge.
Pixel Warrior: Work in the real world for someone else first. Let others foot the bill while you gain experience before breaking out on your own. There’s no substitute for real-world experience. Get this experience, even if getting it means becoming an unpaid intern for a while. Along the way, pick up a few pro bono projects. Make your services available to local businesses, nonprofits, printers, Web developers, photographers, etc. The more work you do, the more experience you’ll gain. If the work is good, it will help you get noticed when you break out on your own.

Rick Soto
Creative Director, Soto Creative
Los Altos, California
www.sotocreative.com

It took us 10 years to become an overnight success. Freelance is a full-time job. The most successful freelancing creative people I met work every single day. (Find the project. Do the project.) There are no days off if you want to be successful. It’s no different than running your own firm or studio. You have to put in the time. There’s no magic formula.

Terese Nielsen

STEP FOUR

The Mercenary: Make contacts and stay in touch with them. Former special operations teams do occasionally work with private security firms.
Pixel Warrior: Make contacts while in college. The people you meet in college will be working in the future, so keep in touch with them. Continue to network after college and network again and again forever. Stay in touch with college contacts, former employers, and co-workers.

Nigel Sherry
Creative Director, The Lead Pencil Design Studio
Los Angeles, California
www.lpencil.com

Freelancing is not always about having a great portfolio—a large percentage of projects come from personal contacts or recommendations. I cannot stress enough the importance of networking and building good relationships with your current warriors before entering the freelance market. You never know when you’ll be calling on them again from a previous deployment or a new one!

Tariq Hassan
Art Director/Illustrator
Atlanta, Georgia
www.studiorevolver.com

The word “network” is the most misleading term in business. Because we have so many ways to communicate now, I find it hard to know exactly when I’m networking or when I’ve done it successfully. Over the past two years I’ve been in job search training and a lot of networking groups, and I’ve distilled network down to a few simple rules:
1. To network, you must have a goal; not an aim, but a specific one-sentence goal. And then you need a target: a company, person, or department.
2. You must have a clear message. Just talking someone up and getting the contact info won’t help if the other party doesn’t get what you’re trying to do.
3. Your network needs watering. Remember, if you don’t feed your network with reciprocal actions, it might wither away. Instead of following up a request you’ve made by asking, “Have they answered yet,” you’d do better to email a great article that they might be interested in (if the person they contacted for you has answered, they’ll probably tell you at this point, and you never have to ask). Also keep your network updated with your goals and work.

Paul Hebron

STEP FIVE

The Mercenary: Stay in shape, both physically and mentally. Being in great shape makes your work a lot easier.
Pixel Warrior: Stay in shape. Keep up with the latest software and industry trends. Stay in shape to remain competitive. This will become a lifelong pursuit.

Terese Nielsen
Art Director/Illustrator
Temple City, California
http://teresenielsen.typepad.com

Everything sucks if you’re sick. It’s extremely difficult to sustain a high level of creativity and craftsmanship in your work when you’re not feeling physically vibrant. Keep in shape, eat right, and be sure to flex your business and personal development muscles. You’re an entrepreneur. To achieve the highest probability of success, develop a lifetime habit of learning and implementing new skills and strategies. While painting, 95% of the time I’m listening to educational materials on personal development and how to build a business. I study sales, marketing, networking, publishing, social media, and negotiating, and I make friends with people that are experts in these areas.

STEP SIX

The Mercenary: Take advantage of all available tools. Go online and research to find the best company for you and your skill set.
Pixel Warrior: Market your brand and be visible. Have a website that showcases your work. Build and maintain a strong network of personal and professional contacts. Use the many online tools available, and learn how to use LinkedIn’s company and job search tools to find inside contacts.

Larry Asher
Co-Director, School of Visual Concepts
Creative Director, Worker Bees, Inc.
Seattle, Washington
www.svcseattle.com
www.workerbees.com

Of course you’re going to want to scour the “careers” sections of in-house creative department and agency websites. No doubt you’ll also see what’s up for grabs on craigslist, Monster.com, Creative Hotlist, and all the rest. But before you put all your eggs in the online job-posting basket, consider this: Do you suppose George Clooney gets dates on Match.com? Why should he? He’s so absurdly desirable he doesn’t have to. I’d submit the same is true for jobs. The George Clooneys of assignments—the fabulous projects with great creative potential that pay well and don’t have ridiculous deadlines—don’t need to go begging online. They get filled in a heartbeat by people who have connections inside the client company: friends of employees, job-seekers who have taken the time to cultivate a relationship, and top freelancers who have a visible reputation in their field of expertise are all highly likely to get the call even before these George Clooneys get posted (if they’re posted at all).

So, what’s a freelancer to do? Check out the company websites and job sites but don’t rely on them. Spend your downtime building relationships with the companies you’d like to work for, and don’t let those relationships go stale. Check in with your contacts from time to time to let them see your latest work or hear about a new set of skills you’ve picked up.

And, on that last note, if you don’t have a new set of skills to talk about, get them. There are plenty of great places that can help you add to your bag of tricks. (Naturally, I’d offer up my own school, the School of Visual Concepts, www.svcseattle.com.) The best advice is probably that offered by Garrison Keillor at the conclusion of his public radio show, The Writer’s Almanac: “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

Tariq Hassan

Brian Castleforte
Illustrator, Motion Designer & Animator, Castleforte Group
Los Angeles, California
http://castleforte.com

It’s a little different for me because I started in this business at the absolute right time, and I’ve been working in the top sector of this business for the last 10 years. But even with that, I still put a good deal of effort into marketing myself online, building my brand, which is essentially me. Or in your case, you. I put myself out there on portfolio sites, Facebook, Vimeo, forums, and of course, my own professional/portfolio site. It has been a huge help to me, having been mentioned or featured on sites such as Motionographer, Behance, Vimeo, etc. The more places where people can see your work, the more people will know about you. You have to be on the radar before you can expect to get the calls. So don’t be shy, get your work out there for the world to see. Build a nice, functional site that best shows off your skills, and then do all you can to let people know it’s there. And don’t feel like you need to show everything you have done. Especially the weak stuff. A little goes a long way when the work is strong.

Questions to consider

Are you a self-starter who can work independently and wear multiple hats, including handling clerical, billing, and accounting procedures? Do you have a good business sense?
A self-starter: Deadlines rule. Missing deadlines and offering excuses could be the death of your freelance career. If you struggle to meet deadlines or can’t get your butt in gear, then go back to a 9–5 gig. The people who hire your services are putting their reputations on the line. If you make them look good, then you’ll look good.

I hated the clerical part of freelancing, but I loved getting paid. I used that as my motivation to keep on top of all of my paper work. I know of one freelancer who didn’t bill for completed work until about a year after the work was done. He said, he was too busy. Wow! Go figure. Too busy to get paid.

Are you a promoter with a marketing vision and strategy who enjoys promoting and reaching out to others about your services?
A promoter: I struggled with this one. I only wanted to do the work and get paid. I looked at promoting as being a salesman, something I didn’t enjoy. I confided in a friend about my struggles, and he shared a technique that he practiced and found successful. Frank owned a printing service and on occasion he’d make deliveries to clients instead of sending an employee. He’d bring along coffee and donuts when he dropped off finished projects in the morning and used the face time to see how things were going. Sometimes, he’d ask if there was a project he could take with him. He said, “This is the kind of thing an employee wouldn’t do. I’m maintaining a relationship with my clients, not just dropping off a job. I want them to know I care about the success of their business and that I’m there to help.” Frank’s advice changed my viewpoint. It was about keeping in touch with people, not selling.

By the way, don’t be afraid to ask clients for leads. Never burn a bridge behind you, even if you think you’ll never cross it again.

Are you prepared to take risks, including the lack of job security without a steady paycheck or company-provided benefits?
A risk taker: Freelancing is risk taking, but it doesn’t mean being foolish. Let’s face it, you might not get regular paychecks, but your bills still need to be paid regularly. Plan ahead and try to mitigate as much of that risk as possible. Cut your expenses, pay off credit card debt, and build up a contingency or emergency fund. Manage your finances in such a way as to endure and thrive between doing the work and getting paid.

We’ve made comparisons between a mercenary and a freelancer, the pixel warrior. You’ve read six steps to consider in preparation for a warrior’s journey. You’ve also heard from successful pixel warriors. Please, check out their websites and note their work. We’ve given you a personal checklist as a review to help you determine if you have the right stuff. We hope this information will better equip you if you choose to heed the pixel warrior’s call. May your path bring success, honor, and recognition.

References
1. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., “Freelancer,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer.

2. “The Mercenary” steps derived from W. Scoggin, “How to Become a Mercenary,” eHow, Inc., http://www.ehow.com/how_4477295_become-a-mercenary.html.

Bio
Paul Hebron is an award-winning art director and designer living in the Seattle area. He recently returned to school and is majoring in animation. Paul’s studies include Maya, Flash, and After Effects. He states, “Taking time to learn new tools and sharpen my technical skills was a great decision.”

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While many reviews of software plug-ins oftentimes focus on listing a bunch of the effects found in the package (which are all found on the manufacturer’s website anyway), I want to focus on the underlying technology improvements found in version 7 of BCC. Graphic software manufacturers are moving away from coding their applications to run on the CPU (central processing unit) in favor of having them run on the GPU (graphics processing unit) of your video card. OpenGL is an industry standard for defining 2D and 3D images and it works well on all graphics cards from both NVIDIA and ATI. In particular, OpenGL excels in rendering a large number of polygons and supports 3D cameras, lights, textures, and bump features. So it’s best suited for 3D extrusions as well as composites and geometric image distortions like those found in 3D text, lens flares, and particle systems.
These are the exact types of filters and effects found in BCC 7. In fact, each BCC effect found in version 7 has been re-engineered for the new and faster 64-bit operating systems and includes optimization for OpenGL acceleration. It is this new underlying technology acceleration that I believe is the biggest selling point for BCC 7 for both new and existing users. The results are noticeable and very much appreciated by anyone using effects as part of their everyday workflow. If you’re interested in learning more about OpenGL accelerated effects and graphics in Boris FX products, you can download the white paper at www.borisfx.com/download_files/OpenGLAcceleratedEffects.pdf.

There are also a lot of nice little touches throughout the plug-in set that any working motion graphics designer will really appreciate. These include the ability to Generate 3D extruded shapes from imported AE spline path mask shapes, full support for the camera and lighting system in After Effects, spline-based still and video morph technology, and filters such as Smooth Tone, DV Fixer, and Pixel Fixer that help “repair” digital artifacts that are becoming all too common. There are also complimentary 3D particle effects (to those already found in AE), including Particle Array 3D and Pin Art 3D, and automated optical image stabilization that works without the use of point trackers. When you add in video noise reduction that uses video clip spatial and temporal information and more than 3,500 presets across all of the filters, you have quite a complete and powerful package!

The complaint from some users of previous versions has been the slow rendering of effects and the overall value of the package. With re-written code for 64-bit operating systems and optimized OpenGL acceleration, Boris has certainly improved its overall speed of the product. (You can see speed gains at www.borisfx.com/Adobe/bccae/upgrade_reasons.php#gains.) At $995 retail for more than 200 filters you’re paying less than $5 per filter in the BCC 7 package and upgrades are only $295 from any older version of BCC. While you can certainly find more specialized packages of plug-ins that add even more advanced customization parameters (at a much higher price), I believe Boris Continuum Complete 7 AE gives you the most effects for the best value available in today’s market.—Rod Harlan

Company: Boris FX
Price: $995 (Upgrade: $295)
Web: www.borisfx.com
Rating: 4.5
Hot: 64-bit; OpenGL optimization
Not: Complicated activation process

Client:
Southern Virginia Higher Education Center www.svhed.org

BEFORE

The Southern Virginia Higher Education Center’s logo is based on an abstract representation of the building itself, which stands on a hill overlooking a river.

The Southern Virginia Higher Education Center calls itself an “educational connector,” in the words of Communications Manager Hope Harris-Gayles. It’s not a “school” per se, in that it doesn’t confer degrees itself. But it provides the support and infrastructure that enables instructors and students to come together. The courses students take can be applied to a degree they’re earning from a degree-granting college—in fact, says Harris-Gayles, students can take all the courses they need for a degree at the SVHEC.

The Center’s students run the gamut from illiterate students who come in for one-on-one literacy tutoring to GED (high school equivalency) students to people working on Associate, Bachelor, and even advanced graduate degrees.

The SVHEC is housed in a former tobacco warehouse (tobacco used to be a big part of the economy in that part of Virginia). “We’re educating folks for future economic development,” says Harris-Gayles, so it’s appropriate to do so in a renovated reminder of a past economy.

The current logo appears on the Center’s website and on all their print materials, including business cards and newspaper ads (which means it sometimes appears in black and white). It’s based on an abstract representation of the building itself, which stands on a hill overlooking a river. In full color, the building is gold, the river and the top of the tower are burgundy, and the hill is green with the Center’s name reversed out.

The colors are actually a bit of a problem: the three spot colors can make new printed materials expensive. And having the name reversed out means that when the logo is printed small, the words can get very hard to read. The SVHEC is a progressive, innovative institution based on a cutting-edge educational model, so we asked three designers to give the institution a smarter logo that could work in both color and black and white.

AFTER

The dynamic perspective emphasizes the building’s tower, which I feel defines the building and is the most recognizable feature.

DESIGNER: Anthony Louis Kelly www.anthonylouiskelly.com

The SVHEC’s current logo has some good elements, but they’re undercut by poor execution. The result is an image that’s flat and uninspiring.

I like the fact that the current logo depicts the site of the building, which is a renovated tobacco factory on a hill overlooking the Dan River. I wanted to stay within this theme; that way, the new logo would be recognizable to people who are already familiar with the school and the building. For the same reason, I wanted to stick with a similar color palette, as I assume they’re already using green and gold on current school materials.

I placed the name off to the side of the image and set it in Adobe Garamond Pro, which I chose for its strong and clean appearance. I modified the serifs on a couple of the letters to create a more uniform look in the text—the “T” and the “A” in particular had angled serifs, which I straightened. The picture still depicts the school on a hill with the river below, but I changed the perspective to make the hill seem higher, which works as a play on the term “higher education” in the logo’s subline. The dynamic perspective also emphasizes the building’s tower, which I feel defines the building and is the most recognizable feature. I placed a slight gradient behind the building to depict the sky, and to represent the river at the bottom I used varied shades of the same green as on the hill.

I stuck with only two colors; this will help keep costs down when ordering printed materials and it also makes the logo look less busy. At the same time, the shading effects give the logo depth and character, which is especially important when it appears in only one color.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER
Anthony Louis Kelly www.anthonylouiskelly.com

Anthony Louis Kelly is a graphic and Web designer born and raised in Rochester, New York. Although he’s only 25 years old, he has been working as a graphic designer for many years: Anthony received his first paid graphic design project as a junior in high school and has been at it ever since. He holds a Certificate in Commercial Art and an Associates Degree in Graphic Design.

Anthony currently works as an in-house designer for PrintAll Solutions (www.printallsolutions.com), a printing, promotional products, and apparel branding company in Rochester. He also works regularly as a freelance designer, taking on a variety of design projects from logos and identity to brochures, catalogs, and signage. Anthony has clients throughout the east coast ranging from top financial institutions to real estate and signage companies. Starting out as a traditional graphic designer, he finds himself recently taking on an increasing amount of Web design projects.

APPLICATION USED: Adobe Illustrator CS4

AFTER

I wanted to narrow the design down to a couple of key elements so that when you look at it, you instantly know it’s the SVHEC logo.

DESIGNER: Brian Strong www.brianraymondstrong.com

The SVHEC logo isn’t bad—they had the right design ideas, but the execution fell a little short. I see three problems that keep it from being a strong graphic image: it has way too many elements battling for attention; squeezing all those elements into a letterhead-size graphic causes the logo to become weak and the text hard to read; and the cost of printing the logo in color can get pricey.

When I create a logo for a client, I always start my design process with the idea of it being used as a one-color image, so even if colors are added to the design it will still be a strong graphic element. Here, I wanted to narrow the design down to a couple of key elements so that when you look at it, you instantly know it’s the SVHEC logo.

So my main focus was the tobacco building, the river, and enlarging the school name. I started by transforming the tobacco building into a simple, yet solid graphic image and showcasing the smokestack and water tower, which are instantly recognizable.

The water was the next element. Instead of it being a separate graphic, I wanted to tie it with the building so it becomes one solid graphic. To keep the images from looking as if they were just free floating once printed, I wrapped the image in a box to contain all the elements. I placed the school name to the right, which let me run it much larger than previously. I set it in the free Larabie font Blue Highway.

The new logo works in black and white or in two colors, and if they wanted to use it as a poster, other elements can be added to the graphic without weakening it.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER
Brian Strong www.brianraymondstrong.com

Brian says he can’t really pinpoint the start of becoming an artist. Ever since he can remember, he’s enjoyed drawing. After numerous scribbles and doodles here and there, fast-forward to high school where Brian signed up for a graphic design course and fell in love with the art.

He enrolled in the Pittsburgh Technical Institute and got a degree in Graphic Arts. After graduation, he snagged a gig with a small graphic design and exhibits firm, which gave him the opportunity to travel and set up trade shows all over the country. After going back to school to study Web design, he started his own design studio with his good friend Eric Brown: Design Fu in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Fast-forward again to the present, when he has recently opened a screen printing studio as well as a clothing company. Graphic design continues to be his passion: he says, “I love creating something for millions to see and enjoy.”

APPLICATION USED: Adobe Illustrator CS3

AFTER

I wanted to communicate the idea of forward movement in my design, so I started thinking of ways to incorporate a “road to success.”

DESIGNER: Tyson Junkers www.TJunkers.com
When it came to designing a logo for the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center, I wanted something simple but powerful and symbolic of what the school represents to the students attending. I started out by reading through the SVHED.org website, and found a lot of information that helped get me started.

The Southern Virginia Higher Education Center likes to keep some of the old with the new. They’ve been that way since they started, and even today they hold classes in a renovated tobacco warehouse that they converted into a school. They retained some of the warehouse’s history through an old elevator, fire doors, and humidifiers. The school stands as an important symbol for its students, and I felt that quality should be retained in the new logo.

I wanted to communicate the idea of forward movement in my design, so I started thinking of ways to incorporate a “road to success” that takes current and future students on a journey to the school and beyond. I added a single sharp edge to continue the road into the unknown: the future of SVHEC’s students.

I chose to keep the colors simple, only using blue and white. Blue represents creativity and intelligence, both of which SVHEC has and offers to its students. I used white, as it represents purity and cleanliness, which are welcome attributes in any education center.

As for the type, I wanted something that looks professional while being inviting. I decided a thin, round font would work best, so I ended up using ITC Avant Garde Gothic. It fits the look of the logo and would work on everything from letterheads to T-shirts.

I feel my design gives the school a more modern look while retaining a connection with its history.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER
Tyson Junkers www.TJunkers.com

“Design is every part of who I am,” says Tyson Junkers. “The way I dress, the way I act, the way I work, all have some kind of subconscious reasoning based on a design I’ve seen in my life.”

Tyson’s dream in life is simple: he wants to have fun and wake up in the morning happy to go to work. It’s what he does for fun that influences him to work harder. He says he loves working in design, especially 3D. He has spent countless nights lying in bed awake, his mind spinning with new ideas. He keeps a notepad by his bed for any ideas that come to him in the night; so far, he has filled several pads. He lives in Orlando, Florida, and is pursuing a degree in Digital Arts & Design at Full Sail University.

“My name is Tyson Junkers. I’m a designer with 25 years of influence behind me.”

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Illustrator CS4 and Adobe InDesign CS4

Gardner Sign www.gardnersign.net

Â…it looks good on paper and on the truck. On the sign outside the business itself, it’s not legible from a distance…

Gardner Sign, located in the small Maryland city of Salisbury, started in 1985 as a manufacturer and installer of electric signs. “We built our own signs,” says owner Butch Gardner, “and we installed signs for other companies, like ones that McDonald’s or Burger King might ship in.” Over the years, though, the business has evolved to keep up with new sign-making technology. “We’re a commercial shop now,” Gardner continues, “doing a lot of vehicle lettering and sign work. We also have an embroidery shop and a screen print shop.”

The company’s identity hasn’t kept up with the times quite as well, however. The current logo, for example, was created a few years ago by an employee at the firm. Gardner likes some aspects of it, such as the bright green and the swoosh shape. He says it looks good on paper and on the truck. On the sign outside the business itself, it’s not legible from a distance, he says. It’s recognizable once you know what it says, but it’s too hard to read. It works on the back of his truck because the drivers behind him have time to puzzle it out. But it doesn’t do the job for people driving by on the street.

What Gardner would like a new logo and website to communicate is that Gardner Sign does high-quality work using the latest technology. His identity has to appeal to a variety of customers, though. Salisbury is in a rural area, and Gardner says that his relationship with some regular customers is like a “good ol’ boy network.” At the same time, while there aren’t a lot of corporate clients in the area, he wants to be able to project a more professional image when it’s appropriate. “We try to be what we need to be at the time we need to be it,” he says. With that in mind, we asked three designers to help Gardner Sign be the best it can be.

After

DESIGNER: David Joyce http://exit42design.com
I thought the Gardner website was too dark and cluttered with vibrant colors that distracted from the content. The company is very modern and uses the latest technology, so using a corporate-looking, shiny, and sleek aesthetic for the design would be the obvious thing to do. But that can make a website feel overly pretentious and impersonal; instead, I opted to use a warm and approachable vintage look that feels very honest and down-to-earth.

I started by choosing soft, warm colors: I went with a dark earthy brown background that plays nicely off of the fresh, bright green. The main logo, the main navigation, and the body text are given a slightly yellow, off-white color that helps the text pop out from the dark page background but complement it at the same time.

For the logo, rather than keeping the familiar corporate swoosh, I turned to the vintage font Satisfaction from E-phemera. Satisfaction has a very distinctive capital “G” that helps it stand out, and using a script typeface gives the logo a human and approachable feel while remaining professional. The word “sign” is set in Neutraface Titling, and the rest of the page uses variations of Gotham.

Front and center on the site is the branding with the contact information. The main navigation was simplified to the five core products of the company. It’s placed right below the branding and set in a light-colored bar so that visitors can see immediately what Gardner has to offer. The footer contains links to other parts of the site, and those same links are mirrored in a secondary navigation in the upper right of the page.

The new logo and website puts a human face on the company that should appeal to the “good ol’ boy network” that the business relies on. At the same time, the corporate clients are greeted with a refreshingly approachable and friendly site.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER
David Joyce] [http://exit42design.com
Dave Joyce is based in the beautiful mountains of East Tennessee, where he works remotely with clients all over the world.

Dave graduated from East Tennessee State University in 2007 with an Information Technology degree. Design has always been his passion, however, and designing specifically for the Web has always been his delight. Dave started building websites while still in his teens. He feels it’s a fantastic medium to design for, as it offers unique challenges with unique rewards. As he writes on his own site, “Web design is like no other graphic medium. It requires a perfect blending of form and function.” Visitors need to feel immediately comfortable, and they need to want to spend time on a site. Creating an aesthetic that fits with the company and makes visitors feel at home is critical.

Dave has been freelancing full time for two years and is always looking for new design challenges.

APPLICATION USED: Adobe Photoshop

After

DESIGNER: Jonathan Robertson www.kreativebomb.com
As a graphic designer who often subcontracts out work to this type of service provider, I would expect the Gardner Sign website to display the same characteristics present in their work: creativity, precision, attention to detail, and above all, an air of professionalism. The company’s branding should demonstrate they care just as much about their own image as their clients.

Starting with the logo, I first took the step of removing the word “Incorporated.” Letterheads and invoices will already contain the full company name, so I didn’t think it would be a problem to drop it from the logo. Plus, it would give us more design options and help the logo become more legible by reducing the amount of characters. I did want to retain the dual identity of the current logo: one part serious and professional, one part a little wacky and colorful. For the word “Gardner,” I used Amplitude Heavy, a nice solid legible weight with a slight twist (the angular cuts). For “Sign” I went for Angelina, a handwritten typeface that has really nice curves and, again, is easy to read.

I gave the homepage a much more concise menu bar with just four items, and below that I placed six large “stickers” that act as buttons leading to the main sections. The stickers are each tinted in a single color, but when you roll the cursor over one, it turns full color and has an overlaid title that describes the section. Each section contains a main page that shows a couple of example photographs and some intro copy about the services they offer.

If all the currently empty “coming soon” pages on the Gardner site were finished, I think there would be too many pages for a potential customer to navigate through. My suggestion would be to give each section at most two pages, highlighting case studies and listing their other services in the category.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER
Jonathan Robertson www.kreativebomb.com
After completing a BTEC in Graphic Design at Calderdale College in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, Jonathan was ready to go out and earn some money. Unfortunately, this was in 1992, design studios in the North of England were just introducing the Macintosh, and Jonathan’s portfolio mainly showed traditional techniques. He took a job as color separation artist at a local textile and wallpaper company and pursued three objectives: buying a color Macintosh, teaching himself how to use the applications, and redoing his portfolio.

Three years later, he landed his first job as a design junior in a studio in Halifax. Two years after that, he decided to go freelance and has never looked back. He now manages a steady stream of clients from his home studio in Todmorden, England (approximately one hour north of Manchester), and also works in-house at some of the region’s most creative advertising and design studios.

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Illustrator CS4 and Adobe Photoshop CS4

After

DESIGNER: Samuel Barney http://aftersparkmedia.com
Upon first viewing the Gardner Sign logo and homepage, my reaction was that the logo had plenty of color, but there needed to be a better correlation between the colors and the site itself. My first goal for the logo was to come up with something similar in shape but with a less blinding contrast of colors. I selected a similar but gentler color scheme using Adobe’s Kuler color theme generation site, and I imported it into Photoshop for the logo design process.

Then I played with the site’s existing black background with gray menu bar. I thought that instead of a black background I would try a shade of gray, and it worked out well.

Once I had the color scheme and general layout brainstormed, I focused on what should go on the homepage. I decided to lay the menu of popular services over an image slide show so as to use the space to its fullest. After that, it was fairly easy to decide on three sections underneath the slide show. One section contains updates from a blog, Twitter, or similar source that refresh the site’s content frequently for SEO purposes. The other two sections present the map and directions, and an About Us page that can provide testimonials and other information to get users to click through to the next page.

The goal for a site like this is to get the viewer to call or email the company. That means the contact information needs to be present everywhere, so I put it in the page footer that will appear throughout the site. Finally, promoting the 25 years of service in large text shows a sense of stability that most users will respond well to.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER
Samuel Barney http://aftersparkmedia.com
Sam fixed his first computer at age 8, back when Space Invaders for DOS was the only game to play. At age 14, he made his first website and, along with it, his first dollar as a creative mind on the Web. After working for Echostar—the parent company of DISH Network—Sam began pursuing the IT profession. He worked for several startups and was eventually offered a job with an auto-restoration company as a webmaster and senior IT supervisor.

In 2006, at age 21, Sam got tired of working for the other guy and founded After Spark Media in Dallas, Texas. Since then he has expanded his capabilities and the company and now employs motion graphics and numerous frameworks to construct Web portals and mostly professional informational websites for clients in the Dallas region, ranging from financial planning firms to construction companies to dog breeders.

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Adobe Kuler Desktop App

The definition of “good design” is shifting, and green design is increasingly being recognized as a vital component. As designers reassess our roles, many are endeavoring to invoke consciousness around sustainability at every step in the design process.

The good news is when you can drive down the road and see 30′ high inflatable vulcanized rubber gorillas extolling the virtues of buying green, then you know that sustainability has come to the mainstream. The message has penetrated our collective consciousness: we need to lead more sustainable lives.
The bad news is when a 30′ high inflatable vulcanized rubber gorilla represents someone’s idea of how to be sustainable, then we might have a little room for improvement on the implementation side. There are, of course, practical problems with the rubber itself (and the electricity to keep him inflated), but the larger issues are cultural. You should feel ridiculous buying a car at this lot; as a business owner, you should be ashamed to be this out of touch.

I believe most designers want to do the right thing (indeed, most people want to do the right thing), but we don’t always know what the right thing is, nor do we know where to start if we want to get there. As a profession, we need to start by thinking about design in a larger way. Today, good design is green design; sustainable considerations need to be inherent to the design process, not bolted on as an afterthought. Clients should not have to ask for a green solution; it should be endemic to our approach as problem solvers.

Learning

The more you learn about the environmental impacts of choices and behaviors, the more likely you’ll be to implement meaningful sustainability practices, which will make you more valuable to your clients. But even though lots of people already realize this (and we’ve already established that most people want to do the right thing), it can be daunting. Sustainability is complex and entails a steep learning curve. Additionally, everyone is pressed. Who has time for this?
So let’s break it down into manageable pieces and see how far we get.

Consult The Living Principles for Design: The Living Principles is a new framework for design that distills the collective wisdom of some of the world’s best thinkers. In addition to helping you apply sustainability in a more integrated fashion, it will also serve as a common touchstone for the profession: the portal through which everyone passes on their way to learn about sustainability, and the communal resource to which everyone returns to share what they have found. The Living Principles is offered as a body of knowledge to which the entire profession can refer.

Start a library with a few key texts: There’s no shortage of books related to sustainability, and new titles are flooding the market. For the design profession, there are a few key texts that should be found in every studio library. Even if you don’t think you have time to read them yourself, buy a few copies and have them handy for your staff/co-workers. Buy copies for your clients, give them as gifts. Seriously.

Nathan Shedroff runs a sustainable MBA program at California College of the Arts. His seminal text Design is the Problem provides an extensive overview of sustainable principles, existing frameworks, and real-world examples. It’s a very good big-picture overview of how sustainable concepts map to the world of design.
Brian Dougherty is a partner at Celery Design Collaborative and a founding member of the board of advisors for the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design. He has been practicing green design for as long as anyone and provides tons of practical information and advice in his book Green Graphic Design, an indispensable resource.

In Packaging Sustainability by Wendy Jedlicka, you’ll find a wonderful collection of essays and articles about tools, systems, and strategies for creating packaging with minimal eco impact. If you’re involved in packaging in any way, you’ll find it of tremendous interest.

Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart has a few years on it, but still holds a lot of water. Its frame of reference is broader and readers can expect to acquire a solid foundation for the application of basic sustainable principles to a wide variety of industries.

Paul Hawken’s Natural Capitalism and The Ecology of Commerce provide a crucial understanding of the legislative and economic contexts in which our efforts reside. To truly become sustainable, we have to incorporate these principles into the operating system of government and commerce.

And finally, Daniel Goleman’s Ecological Intelligence will open your eyes to the ecological consequences of everything that we do in our daily lives, the “hidden price of what we buy.”

For an expanded reading list, consult the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design website at http://sustainability.aiga.org.

Connecting

People learn in different ways. Some will curl up with the aforementioned books—others need to get out of the house. There are numerous ways to meet others who are interested in sustainability; industry events and special interest groups abound.

Attend a conference dedicated to the topic: Compostmodern is a biennial conference devoted to sustainable design held in San Francisco. Speaker presentations can be seen on the event’s website.

Meet some people: Across the country, various AIGA chapters are producing Green Salons—informal gatherings for designers to make connections and jump-start action. See the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design website for details.

Join the Designers Accord: The Designers Accord is a global coalition working together to create positive environmental and social impact. Adopters commit to guidelines that provide collective and individual ways to integrate sustainability into design.

Reset that browser: There are numerous blogs, sites, tweets, etc. devoted to sustainable ideals. Steering your browser to destinations like Worldchanging, GOOD Magazine, TreeHugger, and Grist will ensure that your media diet has enough healthy fiber in it. Many of these sites have lively event schedules.

Look beyond the design community: What constitutes success for your company or your client in this regard? Everybody is trying to figure this out right now. How do your efforts correspond to those found in your clients’ industries? How are those things being expressed? Whether it’s through certification schemes, auditing, triple-bottom-line reporting, or other means of demonstrating transparency—many industries and organizations are grappling with sustainability and trying to communicate their own point of view on the subject.

Making

As designers, one of our many roles is to make things. This facet of the profession is tangible and compelling. There’s a strong tradition of making in the profession, and it can be difficult to embrace the absence of something as design. But one of the first challenges we face is to help clients decide what physical artifacts are truly needed and to produce only what’s needed, and not more. To paraphrase Core77’s Allan Chochinov, we’re not in the artifact business, we’re in the consequence business.

When we do need to create physical stuff such as brochures, handouts, packaging, and other artifacts, it’s our job to produce them with forethought. Seek out, test, and recommend better physical materials and avoid the use of any substance that may cause environmental damage to air quality, water, or the earth.

Start an eco paper library: For many designers, paper choice is the low-hanging fruit of sustainability. And paper choice does indeed make a difference. Creating your own eco paper library will make it easier to more quickly specify papers that exhibit good ecological characteristics, such as 100% postconsumer waste (PCW), processed chlorine free (PCF), uncoated, FSC certified, or made with renewable energy (e.g., wind power, geothermal, solar). Tree-free papers made with bamboo, hemp, or kenaf can also be found. PaperSpecs.com is the best online resource to stay connected to what’s available, and Mohawk Fine Papers Inc. offers a great tool to calculate environmental savings.

Know your packaging material: Similarly, create your own resource of good packaging materials and vendors. When possible, select materials derived from organically grown ingredients, such as organic cotton, organic flowers, and organic produce; or choose alternative renewables such as hemp, bamboo, jute, and seagrass. Specify items that are constructed with the fewest nonrenewable resources (such as petroleum byproducts). Choose products that are made using sustainably sourced renewable resources. If you don’t know or aren’t sure, ask. Eliminate waste locally whenever possible.

One important part of making is to assess durability. Should the artifacts you design be made to last longer or to decompose more easily? Can your materials be designed for multiple functions? Can they be repaired? Recovered? Reused?

For packaging resources, take a look at ecolect, which offers news and information about sustainable materials in packaging and beyond, from the eco-viability of natural cork to the breakdown on biodegradable PLAs. Also check out Sustainable Is Good, a website and blog that tracks new developments in packaging.

Nothing is exempt from consideration: There are those who don’t believe sustainability is within design’s purview. Once in a workshop, I had a sarcastic retort of, “Are you going to tell us that Garamond has a carbon footprint?” I wish I had known then about Ecofont. Devised by the Dutch communications agency SPRANQ, this typeface is designed to cut down on ink consumption by riddling each letter with tiny (inkless) circles. I’m not convinced that this act of microscopic conservation is going to save the planet necessarily, but I find it a delightful example of someone inserting sustainable thinking into an unexpected place. It should give us pause to consider any design tool.

Think color: The color choices you make (i.e., the ink choices you make) ultimately affect the environment. When printed pieces ultimately end up at the landfill or de-inking facility, not all colors are created equal. Metallic and fluorescent inks are a challenge in reclamation—many contain high levels of metals. The book Green Graphic Design mentioned earlier provides a handy reference on this subject.

Waste not, want not: How closely do you pay attention to your print production? If your design fits properly on your press sheet, paper waste will be negligible. Better yet, design pieces with the finished size in mind to maximize standard sized press sheets. Ask your printer for an imposition. Re-nourish offers a helpful online calculator to minimize paper waste.

If the printed piece you’re designing can’t be sized to optimize the press sheet, use the extra room to drop in bookmarks, business cards, or other small print objects. Keep a standing file of small items that can be inserted onto a press sheet at the last minute (or a standing list of nonprofits who would benefit from free printing).

Publish online: As publishing tasks transfer increasingly online, Web apps with high design standards and intuitive features like Issuu are great for publishing magazines, media kits, and presentations.

Check your karma: Upcycling is the practice of taking something disposable and transforming it into something of greater use and value. (The term was coined by McDonaugh and Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle.) A great example of upcycling is The Revinylize Project, an AIGA initiative. These folks reclaim billboard material and transform it into smaller works of art in the form of unique vinyl messenger bags. Sweet. What do you have lying around that could be upcycled?

Messaging

So we’ve established that designers are oftentimes called upon to make stuff, and we’ve accounted for the act of making and producing physical things with tangible properties. But perhaps more importantly as it relates to sustainability, we’re also the creators of the messages that go on that stuff. These messages have intangible properties—and are more difficult to quantify—but are the key to design’s power to connect people with ideas, motivate action, and change behavior. The transformative power of design shapes values and represents tremendous opportunity related to sustainability. It’s up to us to help make good messages. Those of us who enjoy strategic relationships with our clients should take full advantage of this possibility.

The elephant in the room is overconsumption: Look the elephant in the eye. The messages, artifacts, and experiences that we create can compel people to want to live sustainably; work to make those visions desirable to people. Can we help to create a vision of the future that’s happier and healthier than the one currently in the works?

Design stuff your mom will be proud of: Created by a communications firm, The Green Team, After These Messages is an online tool to assess the “goodness” of communication (in addition to its aesthetic qualities). By posing questions like, “Would you be proud to show this to your mother?” and “Does it contribute to society?” a grid plots where your work fits: closer to heaven or hell? Closer to hack or genius?

Scrutinize carefully: The late Tibor Kalman urged designers to decline work from companies asking us to lie for them. While most companies aren’t engaged in lying per se, many are willing to use vague language or marketing tactics. Greenwashing is irresponsible and creates cynicism in the marketplace related to environmental claims. TerraChoice’s Seven Sins of Greenwashing examines the veracity of marketing claims in an attempt to deflate this unfortunate phenomenon.

Make sustainability an issue: Add a sustainability section to your website. Include your approach. Post a sustainability manifesto. Make it part of the conversation with your client from your first meeting and treat sustainability as an inherent part of your design process. Nobody else brought it up? Get props for being the first to do so.

Share what you know with your clients about the environmental impacts of their choices and behaviors. Whether you’re freelance, in-house, or working with a design firm or studio—what part of your job description accounts for good design? How can it be amended to reflect sustainable consciousness?

Collaborating

Do you really need that face-to-face meeting? How about a conference call instead? iChat? Adobe Acrobat Connect? Is it worth a 42-mile drive (or a four-hour flight) to meet with a client physically? How can you make your client and vendor interactions more sustainable? Sometimes meetings are necessary; clients should pay for carbon offsets when that’s the case (be sure to build such agreements into your contracts). Check out LiveNeutral to calculate how much CO2 you’re spewing when you travel by car or plane. The AIGA CarbonCool program helps individuals and studios account for this dynamic.

When possible, collaborate with clients and vendors online and share information electronically. Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat.com are great for individual project edits. For multifaceted projects, try Basecamp. Rather than print presentations, share them online with SlideShare.

The company you keep: Choose suppliers that have addressed the environment through their processes. Ask your suppliers questions. How do they manage their supply chain? Are they FSC certified? To what other professional organization or industry standards do they belong or subscribe? Specifically ask suppliers about their energy use. Choose suppliers that maximize the use of clean energy sources such as wind and solar in manufacturing, transportation, and product use. The AIGA Design and Business Ethics Series (No. 7) has a nice list of questions to ask your printer.

Participate in a worthwhile initiative: Design activism is on the rise and there are plenty of great social design initiatives in which to participate. Design Ignites Change by Worldstudio issues challenges for the exploration and creation of solutions for pressing social problems. You can become a mentor through your local design school—implementation grants and scholarships help bring the best ideas to life. Along similar lines, Sappi’s Ideas that Matter program awards grants to designers with worthy social agendas. Project H, Project M, Design 21, and the SoftSpot also incubate and nurture design projects with socially motivated goals.

Take matters into your own hands: If commercial work isn’t providing you with the level of engagement you seek, find some sympathetic conspirators. Look within your organization—who is on the green team? If there isn’t one, then start one yourself. Don’t ask permission. It starts with a lunch group, then an email list—where it goes from there is up to you.

Working

In addition to whatever your clients and industry organizations may require of you, what you do within the scope of your own operations is worth considering. By now, we’re all rinsing out our cans, replacing the light bulbs, composting, biking to work, and drinking from the tap, right? Well, how can you take it further? Can you effectively work from home one day a week? How much of your commute can you cut down? How can you better integrate your own recycling efforts with your building and municipal collection? Can you make a point of serving your clients tap water?

Purchase green electricity: Use wind power to offset your studio’s electrical use. This involves purchasing offset amounts that your local utility must add to the energy grid, equivalent to the amount of electricity you use.

Consult LEED guidelines for other business management and facilities considerations, or look at the Green Office Punchlist (PDF) for other studio-oriented or small business-related suggestions.

Rethink how your business works: Not content with the client work he was getting, Michael Osborne created an entirely separate business entity into which he could channel his nonprofit efforts via Joey’s Corner. Obtaining 501(c)(3) status and dedicating resources and funding enables him to pursue these projects in a more meaningful fashion.

Embracing

Ultimately, each of us will be making changes in how we run our lives. Sustainable concerns will become more prominent in the future and we’ll need to personally embrace sustainable principles and practices. There will be increasing premiums or penalties placed on our energy consumption, water usage, garbage handling, and carbon footprints. Each of us contributes to the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change and will be called upon to account for how heavily we sit upon the earth. Knowing where to start measuring from is a good place to begin.

Measure your footprint: There are several carbon footprint calculators available, such as the one by The Nature Conservancy. Saul Griffith believes that our energy usage (as expressed in watts) is the most important metric. His site allows you to track your energy consumption and take steps toward reining it in. Information graphics from Kirk von Rohr demonstrate how design can be used to explain complex phenomena.

Reduce your personal paper consumption: Rather than print documents to keep hard copy files, develop a systematic digital filing system or maintain records online. Do you really need to print it? When you do print, print on both sides, and save leftovers for notepaper.

Get off of mailing lists: Reclaim your mailbox. Organizations like Catalog Choice, 41pounds.org, and the Bay Area’s Stop Junk Mail can help.

Finishing

Design is a fascinating profession, poised at the intersection of art and commerce. We make our livings by working with intangibles to create desire. To do so, we often make things. But there are consequences to our actions: It’s through this recognition that we can also embrace our collective influence. Designers can use our power as communicators, specifiers, tastemakers, and trendsetters to envision and create a bright new future. Sustainability represents nothing less that the opportunity to redesign how the world works.
Let’s get it right this time.

The SoftSpot
Sustainable design is less about green design in the traditional sense, and more about an overall humanitarian design. That’s the concept behind the initiative, SoftSpot. To be a “Softy” means participating in design collaboration in which a cross platform of skill sets is celebrated. The hope is to create a healthier, creatively driven, and more prosperous community.

Ashley Ciecka
Co-creator The SoftSpot,
www.thesoftspot.org
[Insert softspot-image.tif]

Less
Commercial brands create false tribes. A brand based on shared beliefs creates authentic human connections. Enter (<), the world’s first open-source brand. Pronounced less, the (<) mark allows people to join and define the consumption reduction movement without the need to buy anything. (<) aspires to be an internationally recognizable symbol, like a peace sign, but for a new generation grappling with sustainability.

Ben Davis
I Shot Him Because I Loved Him, Damn Him
www.wpiweb.com

SmartGauge
Hybrids are great at saving fuel on their own, but real fuel savings come with changes in the driver’s behavior. The Ford Fusion Hybrid SmartGauge LCD dashboard is designed to help people make driving efficiently feel like normal driving. We really finessed both the design and the data to make efficient driving intuitive, without being pushy or distracting, or taking away from the fun of driving. Part of the challenge of sustainability is resetting the baseline: sustainable choices have to feel obvious and everyday.

Michael Jones
Smart Design
www.smartdesignworldwide.com

Wipe Wisely
Sustainable design goes beyond using recycled paper and soy inks. For me, it’s about changing behavior and introducing new ways of thinking. In this project—PULP, tree-free toilet paper made with 100% sugarcane—we worked to transform a mundane product into a fun talking point to reveal truths about the paper industry.

Jenny Pan
Jason Schulte Design
www.visitoffice.com


Changing Patterns
R3 is a creative think tank, joined by educators and graphic designers. Our purpose is to promote sustainable design by examining product lifecycles and creating more holistic solutions. The resulting collection of books showcases each designer’s innovative solutions—and how they directly benefit people’s lives. This forward-looking project demonstrates design’s integral part in changing patterns of behavior.

Tom Sieu, Founder, R3

http://r3lab.org

[Insert r3_lifecycle.jpg]
[Insert tomsieu_hdsht.jpg—optional]

The Race to Green
G1 Grand Prix is a concept race that sanctions environmentally friendly vehicles powered by electric motors, hybrid-electric motors, and alternative fuels against each other in a competitive racing circuit through the city streets of San Francisco. It aims to preserve the excitement of motorsports entertainment while advancing alternative energy technology.

Vincent “ViLO56” Lo
Astro Studios
www.vilo56.com (personal)
www.astrostudios.com (work)

Resources

The following resources are alphabetized according to the section of the article they appeared in.

Learning
Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart: www.mcdonough.com
Design is the Problem by Nathan Shedroff: www.nathan.com
Ecological Intelligence by Daniel Goleman: www.danielgoleman.info/blog
Green Graphic Design by Brian Dougherty: www.greengraphicdesign.net
The Living Principles: www.livingprinciples.net
Natural Capitalism and The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken: www.paulhawken.com
Packaging Sustainability by Wendy Jedlicka: www.jedlicka.com

Connecting
AIGA Green Salons: http://sustainability.aiga.org/green_design_salons_1
Bioneers: www.bioneers.org
BSR: www.bsr.org
Compostmodern: www.compostmodern.org
The Designers Accord: www.designersaccord.org
GOOD Magazine: www.good.is
Grist: www.grist.org
TreeHugger: www.treehugger.com
Worldchanging: www.worldchanging.com

Making
Core77: www.core77.com
Ecofont: www.ecofont.eu/ecofont_en.html
Ecolect, Inc: www.ecolect.net
Issuu: http://issuu.com
Mohawk Environmental Calculator: www.mohawkpaper.com/resources/resources-calcs
PaperSpecs: www.paperspecs.com
Re-nourish Project Calculator: www.re-nourish.com/?l=tools_projectcalculator
The Revinylize Project: http://revinylize.com
SPRANQ: www.spranq.nl/en
Sustainable Is Good: www.sustainableisgood.com

Messaging
After These Messages: www.afterthesemessages.com
TerraChoice’s Seven Sins of Greenwashing: http://sinsofgreenwashing.org/findings/greenwashing-report-2009

Collaborating
Adobe Acrobat Connect: www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnect
AIGA CarbonCool program: www.sustainability.aiga.org/content.cfm//sus_resources/sus_greening/carboncool
Bascecamp: http://basecamphq.com
Design 21: Social Design Network: www.design21sdn.com
Design Ignites Change: www.designigniteschange.org
LiveNeutral CO2 Calculator: www.liveneutral.com/calc_splash
Project H Design: http://projecthdesign.org
Project M: www.projectmlab.com
Sappi: Ideas that Matter: www.sappi.com/ideasthatmatterNA/index.asp
SlideShare Inc.: www.slideshare.net
SoftSpot: http://thesoftspot.org

Working
Green Office Punchlist: http://sustainability.aiga.org/pdflibrary
Joey’s Corner: www.joeyscorner.org

Embracing
41pounds.org: www.41pounds.org
Catalog Choice: www.catalogchoice.org
The Nature Conservancy Carbon Footprint Calculator: www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator
Stop Junk Mail: www.stopjunkmail.org
WattzOn: www.wattzon.com

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of Adobe Photoshop, the image-editing powerhouse nestled snuggly on the hard drives of more than 90% of creative professionals—not too shabby for a program that started life bundled with 200 Barneyscan scanners! If you think about it, no other application has infiltrated and impacted our culture quite like Photoshop. For example, it’s one of two programs (Google is the other) whose name has become a verb: “Dude, can you Photoshop my ex out of this picture?”

Over the years, the capabilities of Photoshop have expanded well beyond that of a digital darkroom into truly mind-blowing proportions (3D extrusion, anyone?). These days, nary a photo is published that hasn’t spent at least a little time in Photoshop and, as you well know, some have had more ’Shop time than others. Among the most notable Photoshop scandals, Oprah Winfrey’s head was carefully plopped atop Ann-Margret’s body for a TV Guide cover in ’89. Back in 1994, Time Magazine “sinisterized” OJ Simpson’s mug shot for the cover, and more recently, Ralph Lauren landed in hot water after making a model’s waist look freakishly smaller than her head. It’s no wonder we perpetually ponder: Is it real or is it Photoshop? With such power should also come great responsibility—or so we hope!

Nevertheless, this 20th birthday business was a glorious excuse for us to corner the various product managers and evangelists—as well as veteran users—Photoshop has enjoyed over its illustrious career. In the next few pages, you’ll hear from the following luminaries:

• Russell Brown—Senior Creative Director, Adobe—author, lecturer and member of the Photoshop World Instructor Dream Team (www.russellbrown.com)
• Kevin Connor, Vice President of Product Management for Professional Digital Imaging, Adobe
• Bryan O’Neil Hughes, Photoshop Product Manager, Adobe
• Bert Monroy, digital photo-realist artist, author, lecturer, and member of the Photoshop World Instructor Dream Team (www.bertmonroy.com)
• Dan Margulis, photographer, author, lecturer, and member of the Photoshop World Instructor Dream Team
• Jeff Schewe, digital pioneer and longtime user (and abuser) of Photoshop and the first offsite “alpha” tester, and in the NAPP Photoshop Hall of Fame (www.schewephoto.com)
• Lee Varis, digital photography pioneer, author, lecturer (www.varis.com)

The Adobe Photoshop Team

Layers: As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Brown: As far as I can remember, I wanted to be a mad scientist who could travel through time and, of course, I wanted to have my own spaceship—growing up was not part of the equation. Perhaps I really did become this mad scientist and I’m only visiting this moment in time, but from the past! (Insert the theme music from the Twilight Zone here.)

Connor: Truthfully, I can’t really recall as a kid dreaming about what I’d be when I grew up. What I will say, though, is this: When I was in high school, if you asked me to describe all of the aspects of my ideal job, the key elements wouldn’t sound very different from what I’m doing right now. I just had no idea this kind of job existed! I feel pretty fortunate that I managed to find my way here.

Hughes: From the age of seven, it was very clear that my passion was photography; I couldn’t paint or draw, but I desperately wanted to capture what I saw. I would photograph my mother’s office parties, sneaking around below everyone’s radar with an old Minolta rangefinder. Any money I could save was spent on cameras, film, and dark room supplies. In many ways that’s still the case, only computer hardware/software has entirely replaced the darkroom. A passion for racing briefly collided with photography and I shot motorsports professionally; but I was looking for something more unique.

Layers:How did you come to work at Adobe and on the Photoshop team?

Brown: I started working at Adobe about 25 years ago as their very first art director. I can recall how unsure I was, to be interviewing with this small startup company called Adobe Systems; however, it quickly became clear to me that this company was going places.

Regarding Photoshop, I was influential in the original purchase of Photoshop at Adobe. John Knoll gave me one of the first demonstrations of Photoshop and from the moment I saw it, I knew the world was about to change. In the next few years, I became one of the first Photoshop instructors and contributed ideas to its development.

Connor: I joined Adobe in May of 1995, though I was originally hired as the product manager for Dimensions and Streamline—two small companion products to Adobe Illustrator. Early in 1996, I was asked if I’d be interested in moving over to the Photoshop team, and I jumped at the chance. I’ve been involved with the digital imaging team ever since.

Hughes: In 1996, I saw Kevin Connor demonstrate Photoshop 4.0 at the Seybold show; I was very fortunate to have one of those moments where I knew exactly what I wanted to do—right then. I didn’t own a computer; I didn’t own Photoshop. I didn’t even live in the Bay Area, but I had a goal. I moved to San Jose, enrolled in a Computer Science program at USF, spent 14–16 hours a day retouching and restoring scanned photos, and managing a series of digital labs. By 1999, I was working for Adobe. My first months were spent testing PhotoDeluxe 4.0, though I quickly moved to the Photoshop team later that year.

Layers:Were there any memorable funny/horrible or Hail Mary moments from the releases you worked on?

Brown: There are four Hail Mary moments I can clearly remember to this day: (1) Seeing John Knoll demo a soft-edge selection mask in the .95 version of Photoshop—is that nerdy or what? (2) Seeing Mark Hamburg demonstrate layers with transparency in Photoshop 3.0; it was total magic!?(3) Seeing Thomas Knoll and Jeff Schewe demonstrate Adobe Camera Raw for the first time; I instantly knew this feature was big. ?(4) Seeing the complex task of blending a multi-image panorama without seams.

My most horrible moment was when I gave a demo to a crowd of 1000 users (it still haunts me to this day). It was bad, bad, bad, bad—everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

Connor: The 5.0 release was one of the hardest and craziest releases I worked on. One night, shortly before we were going to send the golden masters off to manufacturing, I was working late in the office handling some last-minute details. Sometime after midnight, I wandered over to see how some of the engineers were doing. They had just finished fixing the last of the bugs in the new text-editing features and two of the engineers were about to head out to Taco Bell for some munchies. They asked if I wanted anything but I said I was calling it a night and heading home, so I left them there in the office. When I came back the next morning, I found out they had flown to Mexico. Apparently they had taken Taco Bell’s “run to the border” slogan a little too literally.

Hughes: There were hundreds. I recall Content-Aware Scaling being added very late in CS4. I felt like I had prepped an already strong story and demo, and then suddenly had this surprise gift. So I learned the feature, created assets, and demonstrated it publicly for the first time—all in the same day! Each and every cycle is a rollercoaster of emotions, ranging from incredible promise to necessary sacrifice (we pride ourselves on quality); though, they always end the same—incredible pride, surprise features, and an application that does hundreds of things that couldn’t be done before. Each and every version has, at some point, made me realize I’m so dependent upon a new feature(s) in the forthcoming version that I can’t possibly switch back. It’s at that moment that I know we have a hit on our hands. As cameras, computers, GPUs, printers, tablets, etc. do more, Photoshop grows in leaps and bounds when it comes to what’s possible. Of course, the most exciting thing about a new release is seeing the things our users do that we didn’t predict. Perhaps more than any other application, Photoshop users continually push the envelope with the power of the application.

Layers: How has the procedure for feature requests changed over the years?

Connor: Now there are a lot more ways for us to get customer feedback. We’ve always been able to take input from surveys, people we meet at trade shows and customer visits, and those who participate in our usability and beta testing programs. However, the Web has provided even more ways for us to find out what customers want. We’ve recently instituted a new program dubbed “Just Do It” or JDI Days. These are specific days during the cycle wherein the whole team takes a break from the big features to work on small enhancement requests from customers. Individually these may take a day or so to implement, though collectively they can make a big difference to people.

In brainstorming a list of features, we relied on some of the usual sources, though also looked at reader comments in product manager John Nack’s blog (http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack), along with gripes posted on DearAdobe.com. We also talked to Scott Kelby and found out what customers were requesting at his seminars and on his blog (www.scottkelby.com). The result of this input—along with hard work from the engineering team—is a useful set of enhancements ready for the next release, in addition to new technologies.

Without a doubt, Photoshop is magic—pure and simple. It’s a groundbreaking program that continues to make our image editing lives easier than we ever dared imagine. So, happy birthday, Photoshop! You’ve come a long way baby, and we can’t wait to see how far—together—we can go.

The Photoshop Vets

Layers: How has Photoshop changed your life or improved your craft?

Margulis: It got me out of prepress management. Pre-Photoshop people were interested in learning color correction, but the post-Photoshop numbers increased by a factor of 10,000 or so, which made my educational career possible.

Monroy: As a painting tool, it’s the best of all worlds—it even has 3D. It has simplified how I do things while, at the same time, forced me to become far more complex in what I do. Photoshop has changed my life by adding new titles to my r©sum©: I’m an author, TV personality, and host of a weekly show. I’d say those are big changes!

Schewe: Photoshop has had a big impact on the capabilities I bring to my work by giving me the power to completely control the images I make. This is, of course, a double-edged sword. There’s now no reasonable excuse for not “getting the shot” because so much can be altered (fixed) in post-production. On the other hand, Photoshop isn’t really capable of turning bad stuff good. Good photographic skills are still important.

Varis: Photoshop has become a central component of my professional life. My work as a photographer has revolved around digital imaging for 20 years and, over time, Photoshop has come to dominate just about everything I do in photography. My work as a consultant also centers on Photoshop problem solving. My writing and teaching is heavily involved with illuminating Photoshop and its relationship with contemporary photography.

Layers: What would your career/life be like without Photoshop?

Margulis: You never know, though likely my career/life has gotten better, particularly during the last 5–10 years. The development of a program like Photoshop was a foregone conclusion as soon as computers became powerful enough to handle it, which was in the early ’90s. At that time, Photoshop had several viable competitors, although it wasn’t necessarily a more capable program—the strong backing of Adobe won Photoshop a monopoly around ’95. If Photoshop hadn’t existed, the other programs would have replaced it. If only one program came to the fore, then we would have been better off if its developers were superior to Photoshop’s and worse off otherwise. The more likely scenario, though, would have been a Quark vs. InDesign kind of deal where two or more apps were trying to steal market share from one another by offering more and better features. If that had happened, we’d have stronger tools than Photoshop available today.

Monroy: A lot harder and a lot less fun!

Schewe: I really don’t know. I do know I was doing in-camera masking and multiple exposures long before Photoshop. So, it’s not like you can’t do extensive compositing without Photoshop. The big difference was the amount of time and excruciating effort that was required for accomplishing things that are so darn easy now with Photoshop. Truth is, I really can’t contemplate working without Photoshop these daysÂ…

Varis: I think it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t have a career without it; I’d probably be in some soup line somewhere.

Layers: Do you remember where you were/what you were doing when you first heard about Photoshop?

Margulis: I was in charge of investigating new technology for the country’s largest color separator, so I had read about the capabilities of Photoshop’s Barneyscan predecessor. I told the head of our Scitex department that this (or a program like it) would cost him his job in about five years. The first time I actually saw it at a trade show, he was with me. He laughed and laughed at how bad it was, and told me I was out of my mind.

Monroy: My partner, at the time, was writing for every magazine that dealt with the Macintosh, and that partner and I went on to co-write the very first book on Photoshop. He used to get everything and, of course, then show it to me. The Knoll brothers sent him an early version (v. 04) quite some time before Adobe bought it. At the time I was known as Mr. PixelPaint—I saw the airbrush in Photoshop and fell in love. It was the best digital equivalent of my old traditional airbrush that I had ever seen, and I knew this was my tool of the future. With Photoshop, the entire world has changed!

Schewe: Hum. I really don’t remember. I do remember doing work on some very early digital imaging systems like the Scitex well before Photoshop—difficult and very, very expensive to do anything. I do remember the first time I worked with Photoshop: version 2.0. I rented a Mac IICi for a weekend to do what now would be a ridiculously easy retouch. I literally worked throughout the weekend. My wife found me sound asleep on the keyboard Monday morning. It was the start of a wonderful relationship. Photoshop and me!

Varis: I was very invested in using another application called ColorStudio because it directly supported CMYK; I had heard of Photoshop but it didn’t seem as professional because you couldn’t edit in CMYK. A designer friend of mine had a project that required grayscale imagery and, as it turns out, ColorStudio didn’t support grayscale so I started using Photoshop. Shortly afterward it started supporting CMYK, and it just kept getting better, finally eclipsing ColorStudio (which kind of died and morphed into Painter). It’s funny to think that back then there were a number of competitive products—including high-end systems like the Quantel Paintbox—and nobody could have predicted Photoshop would come to dominate the image-editing field.

20 Years of Photoshop

1987

Thomas Knoll writes programming code for displaying grayscale images on a monochrome screen.

1988

(March)

Thomas and John Knoll license the first version of Photoshop to Barneyscan; approximately 200 copies of Photoshop 0.87 ship with scanners.

1989

(April)

After Adobe’s Art Director, Russell Brown, and Founder, John Warnock, see a demo of Photoshop the previous November, the Knoll brothers and Adobe work out the license agreement giving Adobe the right to distribute Photoshop.

1990

(February)

Version: 1.0

Key features: Color correction, image optimization for output, Curves, Levels, and the Clone tool

1991

(June)

Version: 2.0 (used same box as version 1.0)

Code name: Fast Eddy

Key features: Paths, rasterizer for Illustrator Files, CMYK support, duotones, and the Pen tool

1992

(November)

Version: 2.5

Code name: Mac—Merlin; Windows—Brimstone

Key features: Palettes and 16-bit file support

1993

(November)

Photoshop 2.5 is released for Windows. All future versions of Photoshop are both Mac and Windows compatible.

1994

(November)

Version: 3.0

Code name: Tiger Mountain

Key features: Layers and tabbed palettes

1996

(November)

Version: 4.0

Code name: Big Electric Cat (the source of the burping cat splash screen named BECk)

Key features: Adjustment layers, and actions

Connor: “Adjustment layers provided Photoshop’s first answer to re-editable image correction and effects. Actions finally provided a way to automate your workflow, and they also wound up providing a popular way for people to share their techniques.”

1998

(May)

Version: 5.0

Code name: Strange Cargo

Key features: ICC-based color workflows, multiple undo, History palette, and Magnetic Lasso tool

Connor: “The History palette probably turned out to be the ‘big new thing’ in this release, although re-editable type and ICC color management were pretty important, too. We were really worried that people would just go ‘ho-hum’ because it had taken us so long to provide an answer to multiple undo, but our solution was so original that it still made a big splash.”

1999

(February)

Version: 5.5

Code name: None, though the Save for Web dialog was referred to as “Pocket Monster”

Key features: ImageReady 2 becomes a component, Save for Web, and Extract

Connor: “This was the ‘Web release’ in which we added ImageReady to the box, and included the Save for Web dialog. This finally made it easy for people to prepare their images for the Web.”

2000

(September)

Version: 6.0

Code name: Venus in Furs

Key features: Vector Shapes, updated user interface, Liquify filter, and Layers Style/Blending Options dialog

Connor: “Vectors! This was the first version to have vector-based masks as well as some of the same typographic features included in the then-new InDesign application. Both shapes and text could print resolution-independent, which means that they’d look sharp regardless of the resolution of your document.”

Hughes: “Layer styles and Liquify are the two features that first come to mind; both allowed creative control and manipulation previously unimaginable. It was my first release and the pace of the team amazed me. During that time, working all hours was very common.”

2002

(March)

Version: 7.0

Code name: Liquid Sky

Key features: Healing Brush tool, new painting engine, and Photoshop File Browser

Connor: “The Healing Brush was one of the most successful new tools we ever introduced, because it made retouching so much easier and effective.”

Hughes: “For me, this marked a very important release. We moved to OS X and that was a big deal; however, bigger (to me at least) was the mass proliferation of digital cameras. Photoshop was becoming very relevant to an entirely new audience and suddenly we had good quality DSLRs for under $1,000. The File Browser and the first version of Adobe Camera Raw (which followed the release as a paid plug-in update) answered those needs in a timely and very relevant fashion. Of course, 7.0 also brought the Healing Brush—and that was just magic.”

2002

(August)

Version: 7.0.1

Key features: RAW file support with the Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in

2003

(October)

Version: CS

Code name: Dark Matter

Key features: Shadow/Highlight, Match Color, Lens Blur filter, real-time Histogram, highly modified Slice tool, and hierarchical layer groups

Connor: “The Camera Raw plug-in was introduced midway through the 7.0 lifetime as a separate, $99 purchase, but CS is the first version in which it was included. The plug-in has been improved significantly in each version since, and has almost become an application in itself. RAW images were just beginning to become popular; but before Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw, it was hard to find a single tool that could efficiently handle RAW files from such a wide variety of digital cameras. In terms of features that were 100% brand-new in CS, probably the most notable was the Shadow/Highlight adjustment, which made it much easier to reveal details in your images.”

Hughes: “Aside from being part of a Creative Suite, CS had a lot to offer, especially for photographers. Features like Adobe Camera Raw 2.0, Lens Blur and Shadow/Highlight really changed what you could do with your images after the fact. To this day I can’t pick-up a Motor Trend magazine without thinking about Shadow/Highlight, as they’re very fond of that extreme aesthetic (with Shadow/Highlight used near maximum values).”

2004

(April)

Version: CS2

Code name: Space Monkey

Key features: Adobe Bridge 1.0, Spot Healing Brush tool, Red-Eye tool, Lens Correction filter, smart objects, Image Warp, Smart Sharpen, Vanishing Point, Smart Guides, and HDR imaging support

Connor: “The most generally useful new feature was Adobe Bridge, which graduated from being a file-browsing palette inside Photoshop into an asset manager for the entire Creative Suite. From a ‘wow’ standpoint, the biggest feature was Vanishing Point, which made it possible to clone, paint on, and move portions of your image while maintaining accurate perspective.”

Hughes: “CS2 offered a lot of things for a lot of people. While smart objects took a little while to take off, we’ve seen strong adoption since. The Spot Healing Brush, Lens Correction filter, and Red-Eye tool solved some very common problems while Smart Sharpen and Noise Reduction significantly updated what we offered in those spaces. I was closely involved with the Vanishing Point filter and that was a lot of fun to use, test, and demonstrate—I still get applause when I show that in demos, even after all these years. However, I’m most proud of the fact that CS2 marked our first foray into explicitly improving the user experience. At our 9th version—with many new users—it was clear that we needed to respect legacy workflows while enabling power quickly.”

2007

(April)

Version: CS3

Code name: Red Pill

Key features: Smart filters, native Intel Mac support, Quick Selection tool, Refine Edge, and auto layer alignment and blending

Connor: “Photomerge wasn’t new in CS3, but this was the version in which it really came into its own. New technology could align almost any images automatically and, as a result, many more people discovered the creative fun of building huge panoramas by capturing multiple views of a scene.”

Hughes: “Behind the scenes, we were very busy migrating to Intel on the Mac, though we also offered a whole new version in CS3 Extended. We had new features, compliments of the Macromedia acquisition, and we shared it all in our first ever Public Beta. CS3 was one of the busiest and most exciting cycles—so many features, so much change, and all of it so well received. Personally, the work we did around image alignment and blending gave me the control I always wanted, and made panoramas and masking truly possible (tripod or not). 3D capability also landed in CS3 Extended and has taken off ever since.”

2008

(October)

Version: CS4

Code name: Stonehenge

Key features: Adjustments and Masks panels, smoother panning and zooming, fluid canvas rotation, Content-Aware Scaling, and a common user interface

Connor: “The most magical new thing in CS4 is probably Content-Aware Scale, which can take any image and stretch it or shrink it without distortion.”

Hughes: “Tapping into the GPU [graphics processor unit] meant many new features and a much more accurate way of presenting information on screen. Panoramas and extended depth of field also took compositing to an entirely new level. I’m very proud of what we did around the Adjustment and Mask panels—not only did we add new capabilities but, more importantly, we put the most powerful tools in a discoverable interface that wasn’t tied to a modal dialogue [a dialog that requires user input in order to proceed]. 3D also truly arrived in CS4 Extended, along with healing, selecting, painting, cloning, and much more.”

2010 and beyond

Versions: TBD

Code name: (insert clever name here)

Key features: Only limited by the imagination

Connor: “I will list four major things that will influence Photoshop of the future. The first is what imaging researchers have dubbed ‘computational photography.’ It basically means photographs of the future may not be captured in their final form in-camera; instead, you’ll use software algorithms to synthesize photos from data collected in-camera. The Photomerge feature is a good example of this kind of approach, as well as Content-Aware Scaling (in a different sense, but there is much more new technology to come).

The second influence is convergence: We’ve already added support for video and 3D content to Photoshop Extended, but the addition of video capture capabilities to SLR cameras is pushing more people to explore workflows involving both video and stills. Over time, we’ll need to take the foundation of Photoshop Extended and expand the ways people can work with video and 3D content, along with their photographic imagery.

A third influence is the interface: Over Photoshop’s 20-year history and thirteen releases, we’ve consistently added new features but rarely, and reluctantly removed anything. However, we can’t keep doing that forever, else the application will become unwieldy. In recent versions we’ve been a little more aggressive about removing some features, and we’ve put more effort into reworking existing features to make them more modern and infuse them with new technologies.

The last influence is connectedness: No Web-based application will duplicate everything Photoshop can do anytime soon, but Photoshop itself needs to blur the line between the desktop and the Web by integrating Web-based services and linking to the huge online community of Photoshop users.”

Retouching Eyes Part 2 – Chris Alvanas

Gotta run. Remember.. if you’re at the conference, stop by the Kelby Training booth and say hello!

1

A black, or otherwise dark-colored, background will set off the neon effect very nicely. Create a black background by drawing a rectangle with the Fill set to Black. Using the Pen tool (or if you prefer to draw free-handed, the Pencil or the Brush tool), create a simple outline shape. For this example I’ve drawn a flamingo. Make the Stroke White for now, and the Fill should be set to None.

2

Select the new shape with the Selection tool. Go to Object>Path>Simplify. In the Simplify menu, click the Preview option, then experiment with the Curve Precision percentage till your shape is smooth like neon tubing. In this example, I set the Curve Precision to 60%.

3

Select the layer in your Layers palette that contains your shape, and then click on the small triangle in the upper right hand corner. In the menu that opens, select the Duplicate option. Repeat this step one more time, so you end up with three separate layers with your shape on each one. Name these layers 1, 2 and 3, with 1 being the second to bottom layer, then 2, then 3 as shown here..

4

Toggle off the visibility for Layers 3 and 2 by clicking on the eye icon in front of them in the Layers palette. Select the shape on layer 1 (using the Selection tool), and change the stroke color to a deep and saturated hue. In this example I choose a dark pink. Then increase the stroke’s width to 9 points with the Stroke palette (Window>Stroke).

5

Select your shape, and then go to Effect>Blur>Gaussian Blur. In the Gaussian Blur dialog, set the Radius to 2 and click OK. This will provide the glow for your neon shape.

6

Toggle on the visibility of Layer 2 now. Select the shape on this layer, then change its
stroke width to 4 points and the color to a lighter version of the one you selected in Step Four.

7

Now toggle on the visibility of Layer 3. Select the shape on this layer-you may need to zoom into the art to select the line. Change its stroke width to 1 point and the color to an even lighter version of the one you selected in Step 4.

8

Using the same technique it is now easy to build up a more complex image, with all the elements having their own striking neon glow.